Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Small Business Committee, wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil and gas companies are unfairly benefiting from the energy crisis triggered by the start of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
Markey, in a letter shared first with POLITICO, asked the commission to formally probe “whether oil and gas companies are engaging in price gouging, market manipulation, or anti-competitive pricing practices that are driving up costs.”
“The American people are not asking oil and gas companies to absorb unforeseeable losses or forgo reasonable returns,” Markey writes in the letter, which is directed to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson.
“They are asking that these companies not exploit a geopolitical emergency and national energy affordability crisis to post windfall profit records as domestic pump prices reach multi-year highs.”
